Michael Fitzpatrick is a parishioner at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Palo Alto, CA. After growing up in the rural northwest, he served over five years in the U. S. Army as a Chaplain's Assistant, including two deployments to Iraq. After completing his military service, Michael has done graduate work in literature and philosophy. He is now finishing his PhD at Stanford University.

Like many, I’ve been following the stories of the COVID-19 epidemic in India with anxious alarm. Short on vaccines and hospital resources, the nation had largely relaxed its approach to combating the virus before it flared up with a vengeance, leaving tens of thousands dead and breaking the medical system within the country. Worse, even those who managed to survive the virus found their bodies depleted, leaving their immune systems vulnerable to further illness and disease, most notably black fungus, a fungi caused by exposure to damp and moldy environments. Some regions in India have had to declare a second epidemic, this time for black fungus, threatening the lives of several thousands more.

For us at Journey with Jesus, this is not merely a sentimentalism about the horrors flashing across our television screen. It has affected us directly, as Debie Thomas has several family members in India living through these horrific conditions. In a nation already struggling to meet medical needs in ordinary conditions, contracting COVID-19 often means that patients and their families can do little more than watch and pray. You’d think the rest of the world watching would have little hesitation about wanting to do everything possible to avoid duplicating India’s situation. Yet here in the United States, medical professionals continue to worry that we will not reach herd immunity because so many people continue to decline available vaccines. That we can do so in the face of India’s tragedy is astonishing, but it’s particularly worrisome when reports associate refusal of vaccines with Christianity. When Christians are mentioned in the media, what is heard is that tens of thousands of us will not join in the fight against this pandemic.

Martin Luther brings the Communion Cup to victims of the black plague.

Even among Christian leaders advocating the vaccine, the message has been tepid at best. Franklin Graham, son of famed evangelist Billy Graham, went on CNN last month to advocate getting the vaccine. His encouragement was primarily aimed at senior citizens, and when pressed about the importance of the vaccine, he said that getting the vaccine is ultimately a matter of “personal choice.” Watching the footage in India of tents filled with makeshift beds for hospital overflow, it’s hard to see what is personal or private about this virus. When did Christians becomes so spineless in our convictions? Dissatisfied by our lack of speech from the moral roots of our faith, I found myself turning to the wisdom of those who have gone before us in the faith. In particular, the letter written by the reformer Martin Luther during the bubonic plague that terrorized Europe repeatedly for three centuries. In 1527, the plague reached Wittenberg where Luther and his fellow pastors were ministering to churches. Due to his importance to the still nascent reformation movement, many called for Luther to leave the city, but he refused, explaining his reasons as was his manner with a public reply that is as much theological treatise as it is personal correspondence.

It’s been on my heart to draw out some of Luther’s most incisive comments, not simply for their renewed relevance today, but because frankly we have lost much of the fire in our bellies with which Luther speaks. We need to reclaim these words for ourselves. I will comment on the thrust of Luther’s letter, but in what follows I share Luther’s words directly, so that we can drink deep of his passion as he proclaims the full breadth of the Christian duty to love our neighbors.

The question he considers is whether it is permissible to flee from a region beset by an epidemic in order to avoid getting sick. Luther contends that while we should avoid as much as possible the spread of a disease, it is the responsibility of pastors to minister to the sick in their community. There is no greater need for “word and sacrament” than in the time of illness and death. Likewise, government officials and medical professionals must remain to provide the greatest possible care, healing, and protection for both the sick and the healthy. This extends, in Luther’s mind, to all who are responsible for others, whether it is those looking after the elderly or parents caring for their children. The risk of sickness to ourselves does not relieve us of our responsibility to care for those already sick. Luther writes, “Yes, no one should dare leave his neighbor unless there are others who will take care of the sick in their stead and nurse them.” That said, if our neighbor is provided for, and there is nothing else we can do, then it is quite good for us to seek safety outside the quarantine zone.

The present-day world-wide infection of COVID-19 makes fleeing the epidemic nearly impossible. So what does this instruction to think first our responsibility to our neighbor look like? For many of us, it has meant wearing masks and social distancing. I suggest it also means receiving vaccines, if not for concern over our own welfare, then out of concern for protecting our neighbor. But just how strong is our responsibility? Is Luther simply encouraging people to help each other, that it would be nice if we cared for the needs of those who depend on us? Or does he have something stronger in mind? Here Luther speaks with a clarity and a bluntness that would probably be impermissible in our modern tinderbox social discourse—which is why we need to hear it.

“Anyone who does not do that for his neighbor,” Luther writes, “but forsakes him and leaves him to his misfortune, becomes a murderer in the sight of God, as St. John states in his epistles, ‘Whoever does not love his brother is a murderer,’ and again, ‘If anyone has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need [yet closes his heart against him], how does God’s love abide in him?’ [1 John 3:15, 17].” Whoa, a murderer? If I don’t do my part to protect and care for my neighbor in a pandemic, their blood is on my hands? That is indeed the force of Luther’s plain speech. Before I can dismiss Luther’s words as hyperbolic, I find myself reflecting that if I came across a child, or even a pet, stranded and drowning in a pond, and I was able to save them and didn’t, am I not responsible for their death? The welfare of another is not simply my personal choice, but a responsibility I have for them in virtue of my being their neighbor in that moment.

Wood cut painting of people fleeing a village struck by the black plague.

Of course, Luther lived in a terrifying world in which vaccines had not yet been invented. The question facing us today whether we should get vaccinated is one that he could have only wished for. Instead, Luther and his congregations were faced with the daunting task of actually physically caring for victims of the bubonic plague, festering with boils and all manner of noxious bodily ailments. Luther is not unsympathetic to someone who finds themselves repulsed by the suffering of the sick, but he replies that such a person should view their repulsion as temptations from the devil to “excuse” ourselves of our responsibility to our neighbor. Instead, we ought to pray in response to our aversion to care for the sick, “No, you’ll not have the last word! If Christ shed his blood for me and died for me, why should I not expose myself to some small dangers for his sake and disregard this feeble plague? If you can terrorize, Christ can strengthen me. If you can kill, Christ can give life. If you have poison in your fangs, Christ has far greater medicine. . . . Get away, devil. Here is Christ and here am I, his servant in this work. Let Christ prevail! Amen.”

I love the trust in Christ explicit in this prayer. It acknowledges the weakness in our person to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of our sick neighbor, while turning to Christ for the strength to do our duty anyway. If Christ shed his blood for me, ought I not risk this plague for him? And what of us today, with our first-world hospitals and state-of-the-art vaccines? If Luther and his congregations would risk personally caring for the victims of the black death, cannot we do such a small thing as have a couple needles poked into us? Sure, there is a risk of temporary unwellness for a few days afterwards, particularly the second dose. In a very tiny minority of people, there is the risk of allergic reactions to the vaccine. But again, Luther and his congregation were risking exposure to the bubonic plague! The duty Luther sets before us is not a personal choice, but the willingness to take such risks precisely because we believe that is Christ who holds the keys to life and death.

Luther reminds us that if it were Christ who was lying ill with plague, we would fall over ourselves to come to his aid. Yet didn’t Christ say that as you have done to the least of these, you have done unto me? Therefore there is no one undeserving of our care, because to care for anyone in obedience to Christ is to care for them as if they were Christ. “If you wish to serve Christ and to wait on him,” Luther writes, “very well, you have your sick neighbor close at hand.” Today we might say, very well, you have a vaccine clinic near you.

The Black Death at Tournai.

Although Luther did not know of vaccines, he certainly was familiar with medical practices that could protect oneself so that a person does not infect others. In a particularly candid passage, Luther contends,

“It is even more shameful for a person to pay no heed to his own body and to fail to protect it against the plague the best he is able, and then to infect and poison others who might have remained alive if he had taken care of his body as he should have. He is thus responsible before God for his neighbor’s death and is a murderer many times over. Indeed, such people behave as though a house were burning in the city and nobody were trying to put the fire out. Instead they give leeway to the flames so that the whole city is consumed, saying that if God so willed, he could save the city without water to quench the fire.”

He continues, “No, my dear friends, that is no good. Use medicine; take potions which can help you; fumigate house, yard, and street; shun persons and places wherever your neighbor does not need your presence or has recovered, and act like someone who wants to help put out the burning city” (emphasis mine).

Social distancing, lock down, vaccination—nearly every pandemic response we’ve endured the past year is implied here in Luther’s ardent words. A pandemic is like a burning city, where the fire departments are stretched thin and we must all do our part to bring the blaze to an end. What shame is it if our neighbor gets sick in part because not enough of us were vaccinated to help the medical community get out in front of this virus?

As Christians living in obedience to the will of our Redeemer, neutrality is not available to us. Right now, the popular stereotype of us is that we will not get vaccinated. That we cannot be bothered to help our neighbor. That we “disdain the use of medicines,” “do not avoid places and persons infected by the plague, but lightheartedly make sport of it and wish to prove how independent [we] are.” Luther condemns this as “not trusting God, but tempting him,” for “if some are so foolish as not to take precautions but aggravate the contagion, then the devil has a heyday and many will die.” Whatever else we believe, this is not the sacrificial life our faith has called us to. We should be the community that models for the rest of our society what it means to care for our neighbor. We should be the city on the hill that is a witness to what true salvation looks like, not just of our souls but our souls and bodies.

It is my prayer that in the months to come, we might become known for our willingness to do whatever we can to act in love for our neighbor. It is my prayer that out of obedience to Christ we might all endure whatever risks are associated with getting vaccinated for COVID-19 so as to mitigate the far greater risks of the virus to ourselves and our communities. But most of all, I hope that someday soon, when another person learns that we are Christians, their stereotype of us will be, “Oh good, that means you are someone who will help put out the burning city!”

Michael Fitzpatrick welcomes comments and questions via m.c.fitzpatrick@outlook.com

Image credits: (1) Fine Art America; (2) University of Iowa Libraries; and (3) Medieval Histories.